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This week, New Hampshire joins a small fraternity of states and countries to permit gay marriage - a powerful statement to the nation and the world that New Hampshire will no longer treat some residents as second-class citizens.

Granting same-sex couples the right to enter into civil marriage contracts should be the law of the land because it "promotes the general welfare," as is one of the stated foundational goals of the Constitution of the United States.

Granting same-sex couples the right to contractual (that is, legally recognized by way of a marriage license) and civil (that is, secular, non-religious) marriages would harm no one yet help a minority still subject to stereotyping and bigotry in both law and in everyday life in too much of the republic.

The personal bond undergirding a same-sex civil marriage as well as the actual codified rights and responsibilities that a marriage license brings (more than 1000 such benefits at the federal level) would promote the same positive personal and societal consequences that they do for a traditional marriage. First, the personal benefits are clear. Numerous studies have found that for most people marriage results in increased personal satisfaction. But, beyond that there is even more. Marriage for a couple, same-sex or traditional, can ameliorate self-centeredness by giving each member of the couple a greater stake in one another's well-being and a greater stake in society. In fact, job performance, fiscal stewardship, and community betterment can all be enhanced as a consequence. Retirement planning, vacation planning--and presuming cohabitation and home ownership--everything from grocery purchases, mortgage payments, and the safety-related, economic stability, and general improvement concerns for the neighborhood are all investments of time and resources that are promoted by marriage, traditional or same-sex.

To ban or discourage same-sex civil marriage is to ban or discourage those potential personal and societal benefits described above, and thus is an abject opposition to the promotion of the general welfare. What is more, it is probably a move based in some measure in animus against the gay individual because it is to demand that Americans who happen to be gay be compelled under the law to stay forever single. Why would any human being who knows the value of human companionship use the state--or any other powerful force--to such a thing? It is reprehensible.

To ban or discourage the potential personal and societal benefits stemming from same-sex civil marriage is something else, too, not just societally unhelpful. It is to hold cheap life-long committed relationships of same-sex couples in general. That there are already gay couples who though personal, emotional commitment alone have stayed together for many years without any incentive from the law shows clearly that there can be a bond between two gay men or gay women that in myriad ways is effectively at least as strong as the bond between a married man and woman. That bond if between a man and a woman is promoted by the state; the marriage license brings with it everything from hospital visitation rights to immigration rights, taxable income implications to inheritance rights. If the bond is much the same in a same-sex couple, shouldn't the state promote it through marriage for them, too?

Right now, extending to same-sex couples the right to civil marriage promotes the general welfare within the jurisdictions of Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire (pending), Vermont, and the Oregon-based Coquille Indian Tribe, but only to the extent that state or tribal law is affected. Why should that be the limit? Extending to same-sex couples the right to civil marriage should be done at the federal level, too, so that the laws that matter most to a couple are reformed, and as soon as possible.

has (shamefully) assured the pharmaceutical companies that an expanded healthcare system will not use the power of government as a purchaser to bargain down drug prices, while wryly saying in public that he "doesn't want to kill Grandma". Rather than challenging these hard interests and bizarre fantasies aggressively, he has tried to flatter and soothe them.

This kind of mania can't be co-opted: it can only be overruled. Sometimes in politics you will have enemies, and they must be democratically defeated. The political system cannot be gummed up by a need to reach out to the maddest people or the greediest constituencies. There is no way to expand healthcare without angering Big Pharma and the Republicaloons. So be it. As Arianna Huffington put it, "It is as though, at the height of the civil rights movement, you thought you had to bring together Martin Luther King and George Wallace and make them agree. It's not how change happens."

I've enjoyed, call me sad, running the figures on some right wing claims. The "pro life" lobby are a good candidate. Now, don't get me wrong, I think abortion is regrettable, and that advances in medical technology may even have an impact on the point at which it should no longer be available... however...

1) Between 1973 and 2005 (the years I had figures for), the number of abortions on average decrease during the years of Democratic presidencies, and increase during the years of Republican presidencies. Which is interesting. It may be a bit much to suggest that these figures tell us that support for sex education works, and support primarily for abstinence programmes doesn't... but it is a temptation.

2) If you are "pro life" but against a public health option (there are a lot of elected representative, if not as many real people, who support this position), you should consider that the US has an infant mortality rate of 6.3 per 1000 live births (an unfortunate figure of 26,072 roughly per year). Compare to two western countries with public health care, the UK rate is 4.93/1000 (would reduce US infant mortality figures by approx. 5670 pa), Sweden's rate is 2.75 (would reduce US figures by approx. 14,691).

If you're "pro life", shouldn't you care up to and beyond the moment of birth, at least up to the first few weeks?! I understand if you get a bit bored after that.

And last point, I promise... US spends approx.16% of GDP on healthcare, UK 8.5%, Sweden 9.25%.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow introduced religious right-wing evangelical pastor Lou Engle to the political nation last Wednesday, cutting into the Family Research Council's live "Prayercast." She described Engle as:

"the pastor calling for a second American civil war, for American Christians to be martyred against abortion - headlining tonight's anti-health care reform event, with two serving US Republican senators and two serving Republican members of Congress."

Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a Roman Catholic...is this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker.... George had drafted a 4,700-word manifesto that promised resistance to the point of civil disobedience against...same-sex marriage.

Versha Sharma and Mark Bergen of TPM Cafe say that "The Center Has Not Held," and as evidence, we have Max Blumenthal's new book -- which we will be discussing all week at TPM Cafe, and everyone is welcome to join in.

By now the internal combustion of the national Republican party is clearly evident. The fringe has overtaken the center, led in part by a powerful alliance of religion and politics. Journalist Max Blumenthal has been chronicling this takeover meticulously -- and TPMCafe is pleased to feature his latest book, Republican Gomorrah, in the Book Club discussion this week. Max is currently a senior writer at The Daily Beast and a Puffin Foundation writing fellow at The Nation Institute.

The Ugandan branch of a US-based evangelical group called "College of Prayer" played, as a new talk To Action report details, a major and little noticed role organizing and inspiring legislators behind the pending Anti Homosexuality Bill due to come before Uganda's parliament early in 2010. Homosexuality is already legally a crime in Uganda that can lead to lifetime prison sentences, but the new bill would mandate the death penalty for homosexual acts and critics have called it "genocidal" and charged that the bill could require the execution of HIV positive Ugandan citizens. As the College of Prayer website describes, the group is now organizing in Canada's parliament.